Super interesting brand expansion ideas. How far can they take it?
Is your focus on the core customer holding back your brand?
For anyone at Outdoor Retailer trade show, MercuryCSC Jeff Welch is leading a seminar on the risks associated with (mis)aligning your brand with the core customer. Friday, Noon, at the Marriott.
For those not attending, we’ll be live-streaming the event here and on Mercury’s Facebook page.
Joining Jeff will be Orvis Product Development Specialist Steve Hemkens, ExOfficio General Manager Steve Bendzak, and NOLS Director of Admissions and Marketing Bruce Palmer.
They will discuss their brands’ struggles and successes balancing very enthusiastic core audiences and efforts to expand into other markets.
Also, former Patagonia and Prana executive Rich Hill will resurface to discuss his new venture, Ticla, and how he is taking advantage of a clean slate to position the brand to the most broad audience possible.
See you there.
Great spot, good idea: Nike rides coattails of Rory’s popularity to re-introduce (again) Tiger in ‘No Cup Is Safe’ (by NikeGolf)
Deutsch’s Douglas Van Praet discusses how focus-group feedback, and the whole notion of the consumer and personas, are misguided and how research should focus on understanding the unconscious and improving human lives.
The conscious mind is simply not running the show, but we’ve created an entire industry pretending that it does.
Or, why data alone can’t drive creative campaigns…
A great discussion on the cult of personality and an icon’s effect on brand image.
Should we be more lenient when it comes to leaders who are flawed individuals? If so — when do a leader’s personal demons taint a brand’s message, or stop helping the greater good?
Some solid perspective on the power of story from @DanielCoyle, and brand identity vs brand image from Nathalie Laidler-Kylander.
Great piece by Austin McGhie from @SterlingBrands on the importance for brands of having an opinion, a point of view, a worldview…however you want to say it. Brands have to stand for something and in doing so will become unpalatable to some customers. And that is good.
Polarization is good. Traveling the middle road, as broad and tempting as it may be, is always and unequivocally bad. Like people, brands are defined by the company they keep. But they’re also defined by the company they don’t keep.
This is a succinct and powerful case against “brand engagement” and “brand relationships” as marketing goals, by Martin Weigel, head of planning at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam.
As Martin illustrates, consumers don’t want relationships with brands, they are indifferent. Embracing and overcoming consumer Indifference is the opportunity, for as Martin concludes, “For its existence demands awesome as the response.”
Some other nuggets:
- “Be part of what interests people”
- “Give more than you take”
- “Take a position, don’t just have a positioning”
Exploring humans’ archetypal plots in brand marketing.
Developing emotional connectivity between brands and consumers is a visceral process, not a directional one. Emotional connections deliver on a relevant and purposeful story and cannot be scripted nor delivered with confusing marketing metaphors. We know emotional connections stem from a marriage of people and purpose. Brands rely upon people believing in a brand’s purpose and, from that belief, comes not only connectivity and affinity, but also advocacy.
Likes
-
-
Beyond Adventure Journal
You will like this sweet new Tumblr: Beyond Adventure Journal. Promise.
-
Animated stills from Mogwai’s “How to Be a Werewolf (In Thirty Century Man)”...
-
My Citi Bike membership package arrived. on Flickr.
-
“I hear that Saul [Bellow] is in poor shape again, attacking what he calls the American...”
-
-
-
(credit: MASH SF)
-
Marina Abramovic meets Ulay
“Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intense... -
Email
Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
LinkedInFollowing
Subscribe via RSS
Follow on Tumblr
Mobile version
Random post